2003 was particularly bad
after the 2003 and 2005 seasons, it's hard to believe the Central Region didn't at least expand to 6 teams, by 2012 the Region was still fighting realignment and expanding their playoffs (either of which could have fixed this problem). I do believe in the 1970's two teams from the Eastern Region (I don't remember who) finished 9-0-1 in their district. One team played and out of state game that didn't count or something like that and missed the playoffs. That was the final impetus for wild cards. At first only district champs went to the playoffs.
However, if the Central Region had done what it should have years before those schools wouldn't have ended up in those boats in the 2000's.
If they had formed two AA districts and had the AA size schools play down, and the AAA schools reorganized districts to fit what was left, many of those 9-1 teams in the 2000's would have been in 5A and would have been in the playoffs (plus there may have been more marquee match ups in the regular season and some of them might have lost another regular season game).
I should point out that I have never been an advocate of expanded playoffs of 6 divisions/classes, that doesn't mean, I wasn't surprised by the Central Region refusing to expand.
Monacan's 2003 story was also pretty bad. Bird was 8-2 and Monacan was 9-1. Bird had beat Monacan 14-13 for the Chief's only loss. Bird had earlier lost to Manchester 14-7 so Bird and Monacan finished tied for the title. Even though Bird won one fewer game than Monacan, Bird outpointed the Chiefs and took the automatic bid and with all the D6 spots being taken up by district champs, there was no spot for Monacan. It was brutal for them. The main thing that did them in was their out of district games (Godwin 8-2, Matoaca 5-5, Prince George 2-8) while Bird had (9-1 Hopewell, 8-2 Dale, 7-3 Meadowbrook) Even with a loss to Hopewell, Bird got enough points from this tough schedule (and the points they picked up for beating Monacan) to finish ahead of them in the ratings.
